


The Empty Man

by alltoseek



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 16:06:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alltoseek/pseuds/alltoseek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John felt hollow before meeting Sherlock, and that much more so after Sherlock's fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Empty Man

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JessamyGriffith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessamyGriffith/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Hollow Men](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/30833) by T. S. Eliot. 



> Written for the letsdrawsherlock challenge "reinterpret a famous work", using jessamygriffith' prompt "The Hollow Men".

_The dog did nothing in the night-time_

_You see, but you do not observe_

  


_John_

We are the hollow men  
We exist in emptiness  
Leaning on canes  
Days filled with nothing. 

Our dried voices, when  
We say anything at all  
Are dull and meaningless  
As wind over desert  
Or rats' feet over broken glass  
In our dry bunkers. 

Shape without use, shade without colour,  
Hampered force, gesture without purpose; 

Those who have died  
Directly, sacrificed to Queen and Country  
Think of us - if at all - not as lost  
Violent souls, but only  
As the hollow men  
The useless men. 

  


_Fall_

This is the place of choice  
This is the barren roof  
Here the solutions  
Are raised, here they receive  
The final refusal from a dead man's hand  
Under the dying of the night. 

Is it like this  
In the limbo of oblivion  
Waking alone  
At the hour when we are  
Trembling with tenderness  
Lips that would kiss  
Form farewells to a broken man. 

  


_Sherlock_

_Round and round the garden_  
 _Like a teddy bear_  
 _One step, two step,_  
 _Down you fall there!_

Between the idea  
And the reality  
Between the reaction  
And the trap  
Lies the Spider  
    _Once upon a time_

Between the mystery  
And the solution  
Between sentiment  
And caring  
Lies the Spider  
    _And they lived happily –_

Between the network  
And the web  
Between the genius  
And the fall  
Lies the Spider  
    _Once upon a time_

Once upon  
And they lived  
Once upon a 

This is the way the story ends  
This is the way the story ends  
This is the way the story ends  
Not with ever after but a fall. 

  


_Hiatus_

His eyes are not here  
No one left to observe  
In this city of hopeless murders  
In this hollow city  
This broken clue of our lost mysteries 

In this last of homes  
We grope together  
And avoid speech  
Gathered on the bank of the Thames river 

Sightless, unless  
The eyes reappear  
As the constant observer  
Magnifying lens  
Of death's twilight oblivion  
The hope only  
Of empty men.  


  


_Return_

Eyes I only meet in dreams  
In a Baker Street sitting-room  
These do not appear:  
There, the eyes are  
Magnified under broken glass  
There, is a chair waiting  
And voices are  
In the traffic's rush  
More searing and more silent  
Than a desert sun. 

Let me be no nearer  
To a Baker St sitting-room  
Let me also wear  
Such deliberate disguises  
Long coat, dress shoes, tailored suits  
In a street  
Behaving as the crowd behaves  
No nearer- 

Not that final meeting  
In a Baker St sitting-room


End file.
